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Beatrice Behn: You see the twist coming 20 minutes in, but hey, Farhadis Everybody Knows is still fun in its delicate deconstruction of a family. Bardem is having fun. So is Cruz but her role reduces her to the sobbing mama in the end. Too bad. It could‘ve used more viciousness.

Rebecca Keegan: Folks at the press screening didn’t seem too impressed by ‘Everybody Knows’ (there was audible laughter at a key dramatic reveal). Screw those snobs, audiences will enjoy this movie and so did I.

Robbie Collin: Farhadi gonna Farhadi, but this initially gripping ensemble whodunit ends up feeling a bit fussy and sexless. The definition of an OK start.

Jordan Ruimy: “Everybody Knows” is Farhadi’s weakest film, by far, but that’s doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. He continues to tackle the theme of family, but something is missing here. It doesn’t help the pacing is inconsistent and sometimes too glacial. Cruz and Bardem are solid.

David Ehrlich: a layered, absorbing kidnapping drama about secrets, the specter of money, and how such things can curdle into the kind of resentment that’s starving for any chance to make itself real. Bardem rules. Farhadi’s best since A SEPARATION. solid start to Cannes.

Xan Brooks: Everybody Knows uncorks Cannes 2018 with a flourish, whips up a storm, spills some wine down its front. Cruz & Bardem play Farhadi’s kidnap saga with conviction, though the script is overheated & histrionic

Jordan Hoffman: EVERYBODY KNOWS: Another rock solid episode of “The Young & The Restless” from Asghar Farhadi. The guy makes soaps! Is this a crime? I give it a B.

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Wendy Ide: Birds Of Passage is terrific. Part narco-crime thriller, part magical realist family drama and an allegory for Columbia’s recent history. Also it’s about a blood feud, one of my all time favourite sub-genres

Christina Newland: Birds of Passage was a stunner. A dedicated ethnography of tribal loyalty & the encroaching material world. Family talismans and gold Rolexes fighting for space in the frame.

Emma Stefansky: I’m not a big tweet-reviewer but I will say BIRDS OF PASSAGE further cements Ciro Guerra as one of the most fascinating, evocative storytellers working today. lots of bugs in this

Mani Lazic: Boogie Nights in Colombia but with much less disco music! The downward spiral of drug trade and…. capitalism, babyyyy!!!

Sophie Monks Kaufman: The scope of BIRDS OF PASSAGE is magnificent powered by details of a lesser-seen way of life & a lesser-told story. From an indigenous desert family to the Colombian drug trade, from tradition to capitalism, this movie has it all, including looks, personality & flair.

Jessica Kiang: Well, BIRDS OF PASSAGE is an actual masterpiece.

Elena Lazic: By focusing on an indigenous family initially existing out of capitalism, BIRDS OF PASSAGE takes the classic story of the inevitable downfall of drug families at its roots: this is a brilliant study of the perniciousness of capitalism & its psychological, moral ruin.

Charles Bramesco: BIRDS OF PASSAGE: revitalizes the tropes of gangster film, particularly the deleterious seductions of power and money, through its fascinating cultural context. Also, light coprophagia!

Jason Solomons: Entranced by Birds Of Passage the fine Colombian film opening Quinzaine, a mystical, ethnographic thriller epic about the origins of drugs cartels and the corrupting influence of capitalism, as if National Geographic made Narcos

Tim Grierson: After the transporting EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, this familiar gangland crime drama feels a bit like a letdown. Still, some gorgeous images and precise cultural details compensate.

James McAllister: Plenty to unpack in Ciro Guerra & Cristina Gallego’s brilliant BIRDS OF PASSAGE. A sprawling crime saga with shades of Coppola & Scorsese, but told with a soulful eloquence. A bit long, perhaps, but it’s a film that rewards your time.

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Emma Stefansky: YOMEDDINE strays far too close to poverty/disability porn to responsibly follow through on its feel-good themes; still, the first ever movie I’ve ever seen with a lead actor who actually has leprosy

Agnes Poirier: Always great to see a first feature in competition, especially from Egypt… Alas Yomeddine (about a Coptic Leper and orphan boy on a quest) is too well-meaning and predictable to leave any lasting impression.

Jamie Graham: a leper and a boy journey along the Nile on a pony and cart in search of family. Opening 4 scenes set in a garbage dump, leper colony, orphanage & Department for Mental Disease, but unfolds as a gentle, often humorous road movie with an eye for the surreal

Heather McIntyre: There’s so much to love and admire in Yomeddine. A beautiful film about humanity and friendship with an incredible soundtrack. Big cheers and round of applause from the audience

Adam Landon: I need to talk about the the genius that is Yomeddine. What a beautiful brilliant film by A.B. Shawky, so many important issues addressed, but firstly wanted to say how excellent it was to see actors with disabilities working on screen. Go see this film…

David Ehrlich: YOMEDDINE is a Very Nice Movie about a man with Leprosy and an orphan named Obama riding a donkey called Harby across Egypt in search of family and EMOTIONS. It’s very sweet. Harrrrrbbyyyyyyyy!

David Jenkins: Yomeddine tells us that lepers are humans too [cue 18th travelling musical montage]. A nice film, but not really a good film.

Jordan Ruimy: Odd that Cannes would select a generic directorial debut like “Yomeddine” to be part of competition. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bittersweet, sometimes touching road trip movie about a leper, an orphan and their search for family. Think The Straight Story set in Egypt.

Niels Putman: A. B. Shawky’s YOMEDDINE is a humane & bittersweet roadtrip parable about a leper and an orphan looking for family redemption. Impressive at times, but too sentimental also. Incredible group of non-actors though. Could see this win something big.

Jordan Hoffman: YOMEDDINE is strong in a STRAIGHT STORY way, tho the music gets a little BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD-ish at times. I liked it overall.

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Alicia Malone: 80s Leningrad punk rock by Kirill Serebrennikov, who is currently under house arrest in Moscow. Filled with vibrant energy, tinges of sadness, moments of freedom through great music. A testament to finding resistance where you can. My fave so far!

Beatrice Behn: Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto is pure melancholy, diving into the 1980s Leningrad punk rock scene in a nostalgic way, yet still fueled with loads of politics. He might be under house arrest, but this film is and its music are dancing, albeit to a sad note. Loved it.

Alissa Wilkinson: I like LETO! It’s charming even after it loses steam.

Nellie Thornley: Lots of people won’t like LETO, and it’s style/subject/slight cheesiness and it is far from perfect, but I enjoyed it just fine

David Ehrlich: LETO is sort of 24 Hour Party People for the early ’80s Leningrad underground rock scene. Exuberant, shapeless, gorgeous long-takes galore, a “psycho killer” singalong, the end of an era. I dug it.

Guy Lodge: Kirill Serebrennikov’s LETO is not a Jared Leto biopic, but it’s closer than you might think: an opaque, exhausting, sometimes impressive, often misjudged dive into the Leningrad rock scene. Not my favourite of his.

Michael Leader: Russia’s Velvet Goldmine. An ambivalent musing on the musical magpies that pilfered the spirit of punk and rock – within committee-approved boundaries. Uneven and aimless, but I love music flicks that double as cultural criticism.

AA Dowd: Set against the rock scene of early-’80s Leningrad, Russian flashback LETO has a certain bittersweet charm. But it’s familiar and often just really corny, especially when it comes to its winking, singalong references to famous artists.

Gregory Ellwood: Leto is like those early days of the Beatles movies that really only emotionally resonate if you know the music or have an emotional connection to the band. Some fun visual sequences but basically a love triangle that’s a bore.

Xan Brooks: Many goosebump moments in Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto, a rambling, languorous account of Leningrad punks in the USSR. Shades of Irma Vep & Summer Palace in its DNA. Liked this a lot

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Christina Newland: Sauvage, a French drama about a young male prostitute, was visceral, darkly funny & perfectly cast. See that!

Ella Kemp: I loved SAUVAGE. It’s a film so full of love, with firecracker performances (Félix Maritaud from BPM is phenomenal) and such a wise, funny script. And it’s not just ‘this is great for a first feature’ – it’s so much greater than a lot of other more mature films.

Richard Lawson: Though full of agonizing coughing fits and one harrowing butt plug scene, street hustler drama SAUVAGE is actually quite poignant. Plus, in this post-BPM world you simply must have a handjob scene set in some sort of medical facility

Aldo Alvareztostado: Sauvage is the story of a young male prostitute in urban France that struggles to find a balance between his search for love and his own wild nature. Borderline exploitation of the addressed topic and of its outstanding lead, Félix Maritaud. 3/5 stars

Niels Putman: Vidal-Naquet’s SAUVAGE is brutal, explicit & almost aimless. With a protagonist so drenched in self-destruction (for which no real reason is given), this is a tough sit, despite some clever, light-hearted moments. A film about bodies and… freedom – I guess?

Fabien Lemercier: Camille Vidal-Naquet immerses us in a world of male prostitution where brutality, freedom of choice and the search for love endlessly collide. This is a film which takes no prisoners

Lawrence Garcia: Fraudulent and retrograde when it isn’t unpleasant for its own sake. Even the club scenes aren’t that good. *Now* I’m annoyed I missed the Loznitsa.

Another Gaze: Camille Vidal-Naquet’s SAUVAGE is an unprecedented look at gay male sex work that doesn’t fetishise or criminalise. No police appear – we see a community managing, organising itself. And we follow a body that traverses numerous others without being degraded by filmmaker/viewer.

Olivier Ubertalli: You have to have the heart and the guts to watch “Sauvage”, the first feature film by Camille Vidal-Naquet that evokes a young gay prostitute. We discover the talent of actor Felix Maritaud

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Heather McIntosh: I enjoyed every single moment of COLD WAR. Joanna Kulig was phenomenal in the central role and the film is so expertly realised by Pawlikowski. I already can’t wait to watch it again

Alicia Malone: COLD WAR: wow, now my fave of the fest. Each frame is exquisite, in the way that only Pawel Pawlikowski can do, he is a master of black & white. Powerful love story told over 15 or so years, throughout Europe in the early 50s. Gorgeous music. Ripped my heart out

Anne Thompson: “Ida” Oscar-winner Pawel Pawlikowski’s stunning black-and-white 50s romance “Cold War” — a likely Palme d’Or and Oscar contender as well — is about how fucked-up national politics prevent you from being your authentic sel

Christina Newland: This morning’s screening of Pawlikowski’s Cold War was a tonic. Ideological pressure, Berkeley-lite chorine uniformity, and cold melancholic beauty are all in the service of an open-hearted romance. It’s not perfect – maybe baggier than Ida – but it’s gorgeous.

Jessica Kiang: I liked it slightly more than my peers, which makes me feel better about liking IDA slightly less.

David Ehrlich: they ain’t kidding about the cold part. It’s no IDA, I’m afraid. COLD WAR, from IDA director Paweł Pawlikowski, is straight up one of the bleakest love stories i’ve ever seen. A broken romance about broken people in a broken country. i kinda liked it?

Guy Lodge: Very taken with Pawlikowski’s lovely COLD WAR: returning to the aesthetic of IDA, but to jagged, jazzier effect.

Aldo Alvareztostado: Cold War follows an unstable romance set in the Polish music scene during the post-war years. Pawlikowski’s formalist take on the story is overshadowed by Joanna Kulig’s performance. Soundtrack is mesmerizing. 3/5 stars

Charles Bramesco: the first truly great film I’ve seen at Cannes this year. Delicate and forceful when it’s supposed to be, a tragic romance that reminds you why we find tragedy romantic.

Donald Clarke: Paweł Pawlikowski’s COLD WAR is absolutely gorgeous and utterly captivating. Doesn’t bother selling its central romance. Allows you to wallow in its flinty beauty. Joanna Kulig is a star.

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Farah Nayeri: so many beautiful and poetic moments (and only a few longueurs). Made me miss home. And looked, in parts, like a silent homage to the late Kiarostami? Like that last scene with the winding dirt road in the hills…

Beatrice Behn: After Taxi, 3 Faces is yet another simple but thoughtful non-film by Jafar Panahi. So much storytelling with so little. It‘s almost as if the limitations put on him, make him an even better director. Still, Let’s hope he’ll gain artistic freedom again.

Jamie Graham: Patriarchal oppression, suicide, blurring of fact and fiction, lots of driving through rural landscapes & talking to villagers out of rolled down windows: Jafar Panahi’s Three Faces is v Iranian, v good. Strong performances by Behnaz Jafari and Panahi as themselves

Another Gaze: Jafar Panahi’s ‘Three Faces’ (‘Se rokh’) is a distinctly feminist film as Panahi, as actor, facilitates and sets the story in motion without dominating. There are whole scenes where he (and therefore we) stay in the car while women talk behind closed doors

Caspar Salmon: Panahi in fable mode, distilling his story down to an elemental level with elegance and wit. Political, gently funny, whimsical but unyielding; Panahi’s filmmaking is slow & focused.

Alex Billington: Jafar Panahi’s new film starts as an amusing mystery then turns into an odd commentary on rural life and the dreams of “entertainers”. Has a poetic feel. But don’t really know what to make of it.

David Ehrlich: more expansive & elusive than Panahi’s other post-arrest stuff, as much a tribute to Kiarostami’s rural films as it is a cheeky meditation on the borders and boundaries of the modern world. a gentle pleasure, as expected.

Mikko Pihkoluoma: Perhaps not as exhilarating as Taxi Teheran, this is a more somber piece nearly on the same level. The story unfolds after a suicide video is sent to Jafari’s phone and together with Panahi they drive to the village to find out what happened.

Fabien Lemercier: perfectly written and done, especially in the complicated situation of the iranian filmmaker, but not so captivating. Free Jafar Panahi and let him make bigger films again

Jordan Hoffman: Panahi’s THREE FACES rules. RULES! I recognize that this isn’t very eloquent but I need more time on this.

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Alicia Malone: Jean-Luc Godard’s collection of images about trains, war, Arab nations & more – from movies & real footage – w/ narration from Godard, sudden bursts of music & long silences. Some will love, some not, I feel like it will work best as the museum exhibit

Alissa Wilkinson: I think the most useful thing I have to say about Godard’s THE IMAGE BOOK is it faintly calls THE WASTELAND to mind. But not (at least to my mind) in the good way.

Christina Newland: Jean-Luc’s Le Livre D’Image is a kamikaze inquiry into representation + violence (I think?). It has none of the thesis and thrust of Goodbye to Language, but its oscillations between the hopeful & the apocalyptic are pretty interesting.

Caspar Salmon: Godard in high troll mode – garish montages, jarring breaks in sound and image; facile, puerile, funny, exciting, and thought-provoking when a political discourse finally breaks through the havoc.

Donald Clarke: Just saw THE IMAGE BOOK by JLG. More bellowing at crappy resolution footage from 1950s films and of various imperialist atrocities. What do you want me to say?

Peter Howell: Jean-Luc Godard is a lion in winter, fairly roaring with this visual essay about life on planet Earth. Movie clips, newsreels and his trademark slogans are in this raging montage, making him more editor than director this time, but all the more potent.

David Ehrlich: Jean-Luc Godard’s READY PLAYER ONE.

Xan Brooks: Damned if a tweet is going to justice to the Godard. A fiery message in a bottle sent from Prospero’s island; a cut-up prose poem about death & trains & US imperialism. Often indecipherable, always beguiling

Peter Bradshaw: Jean-Luc Godard’s Image Book much more visceral and fierce than I thought – an essay-film with a body language of a horror movie.

Mark Cosgrove: Gnomic, exuberant, anarchic – JLG with cinephile punk energy probes the nature of the moving image and its relationship with reality and politics in Le Livre D’image. Sound and image as an immersive poetic assault course – brilliant!

Joseph Owen: Godard’s Le Livre d’Image (IMAGE BOOK) is an undergraduate thesis run amok. No referencing, no clear argument, emphatic aphoristic claims, and a wild tangent on the Arab World. A fractured, disorientating law and literature project on order and image. Great!

Beatrice Behn: Jia Zhang-Ke’s Ash Is the Purest White (江湖儿女) starts mafia, guns and power and then turns into a classical melodrama. A shame, the female lead is strong, clever, fearless. Wanted her to become a mafia boss herself, but alas, she went 1950s weepy lady on me.

Justin Chang: Whatever you may think of it — and I think it’s pretty damn terrific — Jia Zhangke’s ASH IS PUREST WHITE is easily the best food movie of Cannes 2018 so far. Do not see this one on an empty stomach.

Alex Billington: Wow. Jia Zhang-ke’s sprawling drama of human connection is part gangster film, part romantic epic, ultimately about how everything changes around us but we never change ourselves. This one is deep, very deep.

Jordan Ruimy: Jia Zhang-ke’s ASH IS PUREST WHITE is a fascinating, sprawling, violent, and, ultimately, romantic look at a low-rent underclass of aspiring gangsters in Eastern China. Underwhelming final few minutes, but overall solid. Tao Zhao is a contender for the actress award.

Peter Bradshaw: In Ash Is Purest White, the always surprising Jia Zhang-ke gives us a fascinating romantic tragedy from China’s aspirational-gangster classes – with an eerie futurist sheen. What an intriguing film.

Charles Bramesco: perhaps the finest “stop snitching” film to ever come out of China. Makes a clean companion with MMD in its elliptical timeline, its charting of wide scale change, and its delightful disco dancing.

Tim Robey: Keeps lifting off; keeps landing again. Zhao Tao mesmerises, especially when she goes it alone in fab middle stretch. But should we be concentrating on her broken dreams, or our own?

David Ehrlich: ASH IS PUREST WHITE is Jia Zhangke’s greatest hits, a meandering rehash from a filmmaker who feels stuck in place. It’s a good movie but a big disappointment. At least it’s a *killer* showcase for Zhao Tao!

AA Dowd: Fascinates me that Jia Zhangke, a filmmaker I used to associate (positively!) with rigid austerity, has made a movie as self-referential, loopy, and surprisingly funny as ASH IS THE PUREST WHITE.

The Syndicate: Happy as Lazzaro is magnificent. A unique blend of fantasy and drama that imagines if the spirit of kindness and compassion never leaves our past and present. A film to think about and marvel at its poetic meaning.

Tom Bond: gentle class warfare comedy with a heart of gold. Too pure for this cruel cruel world

Robbie Collin: Quick FYI: Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro is a total dream, nuanced and elusive, made with mesmerisingly assured technique, and the best thing in competition so far

Donald Clarke: I suppose you can excuse the randomness in Rohrwacher’s HAPPY AS LAZZARO by mentioning “magic realism”. But, for all the many strong, earthy moments, I found it hard to care.

David Ehrlich: I’m not sure if the first hour had to be *quite* that slow, but this is pretty monumental stuff. Alice Rohrwacher’s rustic touch (and usual concerns) abruptly blooms into some brilliant magical-realism. Alba R is a legend. There’s a tiny dog in a cone!

Simon D Santiago: In Lazzaro Felice Alice Rohrwacher plays again with the realist and magical tones of her (overrated) first film with much more satisfying results. Her roots are deep inside the Italian filmic tradition but her voice is truly original. Beautiful

Giovanni Marchini: LAZZARO FELICE is a jewel, an enrapturing reminder of the delicate humanism that was once a trademark of Italian cinema.

Alexandre Janowiak: I’ve been stunned by the magnificent Lazzaro Felice by Alice Rohrwacher. An intoxicating mystic tale, a kind of candid of modern times, of a sublime sweetness, purity and sensibility. The best movie of Cannes 2018 yet.

Victor Blanes Pico: LAZZARO FELICE, by Alice Rohrwacher, is a precious genius wrapped in a photograph that looks like a dream. Its first hour is the best we have seen in this festival, and although towards the end is lost a little, the result is a dazzling and different film.

Tomasso Tocci: I’ve said before how important I think the Rohrwacher sisters are for Italian cinema (shout out to Laura Bispuri, too), but LAZZARO FELICE is not the triumph I was hoping for. Cringed at that last sequence.

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Melissa Silverstein: Thunderous, long ovation following Girls of the Sun. It was the kind of movie they say women can’t make. A war story. Epic. Big scale. All told through the eyes of women. The epitaph read: to the ones forgotten by history by those who shape it.” Eva Husson is the real deal.

Alicia Malone: so powerful. A feminist war movie based on the true story of an all-female Kurdish soldier unit fighting ISIS. Heartbreaking, suspenseful filmmaking by Eva Husson. Golshifteh Farahani once again is excellent. Loved it!

Wendy Ide: Girls Of The Sun is tone deaf, clunky and naive. Score is a disaster and Bercot’s western journo is a plot device rather than a character.

Christina Newland: Girls of the Sun was terribly didactic, with some rather nasty & manipulative storytelling devices. Bad filmmaking in service of a good issue, which makes it difficult to argue with. Not impressed.

Nadia Neophytou: Girls of the Sun – one of the only 3 films in competition directed by a woman, and so a vital addition to the Cannes 2018 lineup. A little heavy-handed at times, but a powerful, necessary film about women in battle and those who tell their stories.

Alissa Wilkinson: Several times I thought GIRLS OF THE SUN was about to run off the rails. But in the end, it works, and it’s moving.

Jamie Graham: Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun is the true story of a battalion of Kurdish women who fought to take back their town from extremists. Harrowing, suspenseful, moving. Sure to compete for prizes. Golshifteh Farahani is superb

David Ehrlich: a little too much paprika on the sandwich where none would have been nice, but Eva Husson is one hell of a filmmaker. Surefire Palme contender.

Peter Bradshaw: Eve Husson’s feminist war movie Girls Of The Sun is impassioned, suspenseful, angry – based on the true story of an all-female Kurdish combat unit fighting to reclaim territory from the incel-fascist rape opportunists of ISIS.

Eric Kohn: GIRLS OF THE SUN just leapt to the top of the Palme race with its HURT LOCKER-esque suspense and tough women leads.

AA Dowd: Eva Husson’s GIRLS OF THE SUN, about an all-female Kurdish platoon fighting back against extremists, is bombastic white-elephant art with a righteous action movie buried somewhere inside. Husson has chops, though. Can she do SICARIO 3?